By Nathan Jackson
July 3 2010

Luton Town was a ground that always looked a bit strange, a mish-mash of stands that was surrounded by cramped and busy streets, in other words, a true football venue. However, I seriously underestimated how hard finding parking would actually be and it's one of the few grounds that I will never consider driving to again.

Luton's Kenilworth Road was a ground I was quite looking forward to visiting. I had missed the trip during their previous spell in the division and was quite anticipating seeing whether the ground was as unusual as the pictures made it look.

The trip down was relatively easy as Luton is just off of the M1. Whilst the ground itself was easy to find, parking most certainly wasn't and nor was easily driving around the town as the streets are heavily packed, making the journey quite awkward, especially with people crossing the road in a kamikaze way (not looking). Infact, getting around Luton is you're on any form of transport is an absolute nightmare due to the roads being congested no matter what the time. It once took the supporters coach to do a mile in the space of an hour.

I was driving around for nearly 45 minutes trying to find a street that wasn't permit only....eventually finding one that is about 30 seconds walk from the ground. I did later find out that the permits were only needed Monday to Saturday....and this game was on a Sunday, although it was certainly a lesson learnt for if I do somehow find myself driving there again.

Kenilworth Road isn't too far from the town centre, meaning there's plenty to do, around the ground is a slightly different matter as even the club shop isn't that big. So if you don't want to find yourself in the town centre, I'd suggest going right around to the away end, entering through what could easily be mistaken for someone's garage.

Getting into the ground sees you enter the turnstiles and then amazingly finding yourself being able to see into people's houses and gardens. It just looks completely surreal and it does make you wonder what the people in those houses think when they're in their bedroom and all they can see is people walking into/out of a football ground.

When you enter the away end you instantly notice it's very shallow. It is quite large but the problem being that the shallowness means that you don't get a great view of the other end of the ground. However, the view of the end you're at is decent enough. Infact, it reminds me a bit of how Southend's away end is set up.

To our left was a stand that is literally just executive boxes and two rows of seats. You can even see into the executive boxes and it looks like a complete shithole in there. There seems to be precisely sod all in their executive boxes. It's even smaller than the side stands at Rushden. The stand opposite away fans is a fairly large seated stand and the final stand is one of those stands which is seemingly divided into several sub-stands. It's certainly not going to feature on many "Most Beautiful Grounds" guides, infact I'd go as far as calling it a shithole.

The atmosphere was terrible as Luton have a very strict "don't sing when we're not winning" policy, and on all my visit I have not once heard them singing unless they were winning the match. Their fans do like to constantly goad the away fans and you never feel quite safe.

Overall I am mixed about the trip. It's a bit of a shithole but there are a lot of unique elements to the ground, which is only a good thing. I personally wouldn't go here for a random game though simply because of the distance.

Luton Town's Kenilworth Road

Discussion started by theimps.ka (IP Logged), 03/07/2010 15:59

theimps.ka
03/07/2010 15:59

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